Are You Eligible For a Sign Up Bonus If You Are an Additional Cardholder of Another Card?

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Update: The offer mentioned below for the Platinum Card from American Express has expired. View the current offer here.

TPG follower Holly tweeted:

“@thepointsguy I’m additional cardholder of my husband’s American Express Platinum – am I still eligible for the Mercedes-Benz Platinum sign up bonus?”

Just this week I wrote about how Amex recently changed its sign-up bonus rules for existing cardholders and what that might mean for your future applications with them. That’s why, especially with American Express, I always recommend looking at the exclusions in the Terms and Conditions of the application page.

Those on the Mercedes-Benz Platinum were just changed to exclude certain other Amex cardholders from getting the sign-up bonus. For instance, if you’ve had another product in the past year like the American Express Green Card or the Platinum Card, the new terms state that you are not eligible for the card’s sign-up bonus. That’s too bad, because the Mercedes-Benz Platinum card which is currently offering 50,000 points after $3,000 spend within 3 months, the application page states “Welcome bonus not available to applicants who have had a Platinum Card within the last 12 months or any Consumer ZYNC®, Green or Gold Card account within the last 90 days.” If you happen to be a primary cardholder for any of the cards listed, be sure to close your account and wait for the required amount of time before applying for a new offer.

However, being an additional cardholder will not exclude you from getting the sign-up bonus yourself. In their system when you’re an additional cardholder, you won’t be listed as having the primary account so whenever you do apply to have a primary account of your own you will be eligible for that bonus.

To my knowledge this is true with every card issuer, not just American Express so as long as you are an additional cardholder you will not be excluded from a sign up bonus when you apply for that product down the line. I hope that answered your question, but if not please tweet me @thepointsguy!

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